Posts Tagged 'curry'

I have been terribly remiss about posting to Perpetual Feast. It’s not that I haven’t been cooking, photographing, and yes, eating over the past many months, it’s just that I haven’t had time to write about what I have been cooking, photographing and eating. I have been trying to sell my house and buy another one across the country, both life-enveloping and time-consuming tasks. But I have folders full of recipes to clean out, both on my computer and at my desk. So, in the interests of cleaning my desk (and desktop) I am going to make an effort to post regularly.

It has been miserably cold and snowy here in the inland Northwest. Although the snow on the ground is beautiful looking out over the countryside, the temperature hasn’t topped 30 degrees in weeks, descending to single digits (extra socks weather) some nights. This lamb curry, originally from Cooking Light, was a substantial and warming meal. It isn’t terribly hot, so if you like your curries incendiary, you can add some chilies or more red pepper when you are sautéing the spices. I first served the curry with store-bought naan – with non-fat yogurt and some spicy lime pickle.
I have since eaten it over rice, and today, trying to use up what’s in the refrigerator, over leftover boiled potatoes (better than it sounds). The curry freezes well, and if you feel like you want a bigger serving, you can add some peas or green beans to it when you’re reheating the leftovers.

Coat a large nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray and heat over medium-high heat. Add lamb, and cook for 5 minutes on all sides or until browned. Remove lamb from pan. Add the oil to the pan and heat over medium-high heat. Add onion and next 4 ingredients (onion through cinnamon); cook for 4 minutes or until onion is browned. Stir in coriander and next 6 ingredients (coriander through garlic); cook 1 minute.
Add lamb, tomato, water, and salt; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 1 1/2 hours or until the lamb is tender.
Stir in 1/4 cup cilantro. Serve and sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup cilantro (I actually stirred all the cilantro in at the end, since I knew I was going to freeze the leftovers.) Makes 4 servings at 11 grams of fat/serving

NOTE: It was too snowy to go out and get tomatoes at the grocery, so I used an available can of diced tomatoes, drained and chopped in the food processor. It worked out great.

SECOND NOTE: I thought it was strange to cook with whole bay leaves, cloves, etc. After the curry was cooked, I pulled these whole spices out and discarded them so no one would bite into one by mistake. The recipe didn’t say to do so, but you should.

YET ANOTHER NOTE: You could also make this recipe with buffalo or with skinless chicken parts, lowering the fat accordingly.

Often on my frequent trips to Costco I purchase the bag of six sweet peppers in multiple colors – usually red, orange, and yellow. Usually, I cut a couple of the peppers up and sauté them with onions and cut up Italian chicken sausage.
This preparation doesn’t even need oil, just a quick spray with cooking spray and the peppers and onions are caramelized as the sausage cooks. And I usually make some non-fat dip so I can take the remaining peppers along for lunch.

But I had defrosted some chicken tenders – and not defrosted the chicken sausage, so I decided to combine peppers and chicken. The original dish, from Cooking Light, called for using whole chicken breasts, which were to be placed on top of the sautéed peppers. This didn’t seem totally logical to me, so I improvised. I also mixed the lime juice in with the curry rather than serving lime wedges.Curried Chicken Sauté

Spray a nonstick skillet with cooking spray and heat over medium-high heat.

Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of the curry powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper over the chicken tenders, rubbing it on so that the tenders are evenly covered. Add chicken to pan and cook 10 minutes or until done, stirring occasionally. Remove chicken from pan; keep warm. Add bell peppers and remaining 1/2 teaspoon curry powder to pan; sauté 1 minute. Return chicken to pan and add coconut milk, and bring to a boil; reduce heat, and simmer 4 minutes or until mixture is slightly thickened. Squeeze juice from 1 lime and 1/4 teaspoon salt into bell pepper mixture. Serve over rice. Makes 4 servings at about 6 grams of fat/serving.
This is one of the photos I had to retake after my camera died, so you are really seeing leftovers over brown rice mix.

Vindaloo is a curry dish from the western coastal area of India known as Goa. It is famously quite hot, and often somewhat sour or tangy. The dish was first brought to Goa by the Portuguese, and in its original format was a dish of pork with wine and garlic. The dish evolved into the vindaloo curry dish when it received the Goan treatment of adding plentiful amounts of spice. Potatoes were not usually common in vindaloo, but were added later as a means of stretching expensive meat (pork, lamb, or chicken) when the dish was served at celebrations.

I really did not eat Vindaloo dishes in my Mumbai neighbors’ homes. Meat dishes were a rarity, although many of my neighbors ate fish, and occasionally chicken. Rather, vindaloo was something to be eaten at one of the many Goan restaurants in Mumbai.

This pork vindaloo stretches a small amount of pork to make dinner for 4 when served with rice and perhaps vegetables. Although many recipes I have looked at cook it more rapidly on the stovetop, it takes well to the slow cooker where the long cooking allows the meat to become tender and the spices to blend. I did not make my vindaloo super hot, but use your discretion. Add more chillies and you can have an incendiary dish worthy of a corner Goan restaurant in Mumbai.

Place potato pieces and onions in the bottom of the slow cooker.Sprinkle with chillies.
Mix next 12 ingredients (malt vinegar through water) in a medium bowl. Add pork cubes and mix well. Pour pork mixture over potatoes and onions in the slow cooker. Cook on low for 4-5 hours, or until pork is tender. Makes 4 servings at 2 grams of fat/serving.
Serve over rice. I served this with yogurt to cut the heat (a traditional Indian accompaniment) and with chopped mangoes.

Big Veggie Curry is what I call a foundation dish. It can be eaten “as is” over rice, which makes a delicious low fat meal. Or you can add various things to it, such as shrimp or chicken. I freeze it in serving size containers to have on hand when I have a bit of leftovers that might mix in well. This curry is also a whatever-you-have-in-the-house recipe. I often make it when I am cleaning out the refrigerator and discover odd and ends of vegetable, or perhaps a bag of vegetables in the freezer that is getting old. One of the times I make this curry is when I’m about to travel long enough for vegetables to go bad when I am gone. I make up a pot of it, divide it in serving size containers, and freeze it, thus not wasting the produce and having something inviting to eat when I get back.

In many ways, this curry is more like the curries my neighbors in Mumbai made on a daily basis – less a formal recipe and more a way of cooking, each cook adding her own touch to the process. Women would come back from the bazaar across the railroad tracks from our apartment building carrying a tote bag full of whatever was fresh in the market and combine it with onions and garlic and the spices that were the staples of the Mumbai kitchen. The beauty of this curry is that it doesn’t require specific vegetables or fruit. I sometimes add 1/2 a cup of raisins or some sliced peeled apples. This time I had half a bag of frozen cranberries left from an earlier dish, so I threw them in too. It was delicious. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.

This is not a “hot” curry, although you could add a couple of peeled, seeded chopped jalapenos to it, or some red pepper. I tend to want to add heat when I am serving it if I’m in the mood, with a few drops of hot pepper sauce.

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add the mustard seed and cook until you hear the seeds start popping. Add the cumin seed and garam masala and cook for about another minute, or until the spices smell fragrant. Lower the heat to medium and add the onion and garlic. Cook until the onion is soft, stirring occasionally. Don’t let it burn. Add a little of the broth if you need to to keep it from burning. Add the broth and tomatoes. Add the vegetables (and fruit if you are using it.) Bring to a boil, cover, and lower the heat. Cook for 1–2 hours until the vegetables are tender. The timing will depend on what vegetables you use. Stir in the cilantro and cook for 2 more minutes. This makes about 8 servings at 2 grams of fat/serving.

This is served over brown rice mix, with Greek yogurt on the side. My vegetables this time were potatoes, cauliflower, a box of frozen green beans, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, and half a bag of frozen cranberries.

My “alternate daughter” came over to help me with an upholstery project. Actually, she mostly did the project while I refinished window sills. She loves curry, so I made this fairly quick shrimp curry from Cooking Light in between coats of stain and finish. The curry is not too spicy, just pleasantly warm. Since Madras is in South India where food can sometimes be rather incendiary, I was pleasantly surprised.

Heat the oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the mustard seeds; cover pan, and cook 2 minutes or until seeds stop popping. Uncover pan. Stir in the onion and the next 5 ingredients (onion through garlic), and cook for 5 minutes or until the onion is golden, stirring frequently.

Carrots are a sweet vegetable that can be used in many ways – think carrot cake. In India, they make a candy called gadjar halwah, which is soft and sweet, and often studded with pistachios, topped with edible silver foil, and served for special occasions. Because of their sweetness, carrots combine well with other sweet ingredients, even if the end result is not a dessert. This curry is a little unusual because one of the sweet ingredients is a banana.

For potlucks I often like to bring a vegetarian dish, since everyone can usually eat it. This curry, adapted from The World of Jewish Cooking, came out unexpectedly spicier than I thought it would, but the people at the potluck thought it was just right. In the picture below, I tempered it by serving it with yogurt – a fairly common accompaniment for my Mumbai neighbors. Milk products cut the heat of overly spicy foods – I can’t remember the chemistry of this, but a glass of milk works better than a glass of water to wash down a fiery dish. You certainly can reduce the amount of cayenne pepper if you’d like.

Heat the oil over medium heat in a large pan. Add the spices (cumin seed through cayenne) and sauté until fragrant, about 30 seconds. I mixed the spices in a little bowl beforehand so that I could add them all at once, and they wouldn’t burn while I measured out the other spices. Add the carrots and sauté until lightly colored, about 3-5 minutes. Stir in the banana and raisins. Add the water, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer until the carrots are tender, not mushy, about 20 minutes, Uncover, increase the heat to medium, and cook, stirring frequently until most of the liquid is evaporated and the carrots and raisins are glazed, about 5-10 minutes. Serve with rice. Makes 4 servings at about 4 grams of fat/serving.

Winter is a great time for roasted vegetables. It’s nice to turn on the oven on a chilly day, and the vegetables that are in season in the winter are very amenable to roasting. Carrots, turnips, sweet potatoes and other winter vegetables become yet sweeter when roasted. Now, I confess that I created this recipe to deal with my all too frequent circumstance of aging produce. The potatoes were beginning to evidence little sprouts, the apples had gone beyond crispy, and the sweet potato was beginning to show signs of middle age. So here is a recipe to make whether you want to use up vegetables or just make something hearty for a winter meal. You can use any combination of vegetables that will stand up to roasting. I used carrots, turnips, sweet potato, yellow potato, and cauliflower, but you could also use parsnips, Brussels sprouts, rutabagas, or even small onions.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Coat a large roasting pan with cooking spray. Put the cut up vegetables and apples into the pan. Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons of brown sugar. Heat the oil in a small frying pan over medium high heat. Add the mustard and cumin seeds. Listen for the mustard seeds to begin to pop, then add the garam masala, stirring for one minute until the mixture is fragrant. Watch the mixture carefully so it doesn’t burn. Remove from heat. Pour the spice mixture over the vegetables, tossing to combine and coat the vegetables thoroughly. Bake for 50 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender. Remove from the oven. Immediately pour ½ cup of hot water into the pan and stir the vegetables, scraping up the caramelized browned bits on the bottom of the pan and mixing them with the vegetables. It is important to do this last step when the vegetables are right out of the oven, so that the water will steam and lift the browned bits off the pan. This makes 4 very large servings at 4 grams/serving, or 6 side dish servings at just under 3 grams/serving.

I have lost 200 pounds. I did not do it through surgery – I don’t like knives and needles – or by joining a club, vigorous exercise, or rigorous dieting. I did it by gourmet cooking. To be precise, by cooking low fat, really delicious food. I love to cook as much as I love to eat. Food magazines are some of my favorite reading. I would feel deprived if I couldn’t have the sensuous experience of good food crossing my lips. This blog is about my perpetual feast, my passionate love of food, with recipes, photos, and occasional advice and principles that I have learned along the way.